Mycroft Masada is a faith leader who moved to the Washington DC area from hir lifelong home of Boston MA in January 2014; a founding member of TransFaith’s National Council, steering committee member of TransEpiscopal, and former board member of Congregation Am Tikva. Mycroft is called to work for social justice at the intersections of faith, LGBTQI+ and fat communities, and is a writer and artist. Zie is partnered with Julia McCrossin, the mas(s)culine fatshion blogger, and they co-parent a dogter.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Village Voice article - "Guys Who Like Fat Chicks"

The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper in New York City; it's the US' first and largest "alternative newsweekly" (founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher and Norman Mailer). It's distributed throughout the US through paid subscriptions, and is also free online (at VillageVoice.com).

Last month the Voice published Camille Dodero's article "Guys Who Like Fat Chicks".

It's narrowly focused, and problematic in other ways, but it's still pretty awesome -- and all too rare. And the four photos, by Sam Zide, are flabulous (and no, that's not a typo). And I know most of the people in it -- mazel tov and thank you! Here's the online version:

Guys Who Like Fat Chicks

Dan Weiss and his girlfriend, photographed for the Voice in April 2011

Dan Weiss is 26, stands five-foot-six, weighs about 130 pounds, and has a thin chinstrap beard outlining his jaw—without the scruff, he looks 12. This Tuesday afternoon in March is the first time we’ve ever met, even though he’s a freelance music writer and we’ve been e-mailing each other professionally for years.

More About

I first took an interest in him in September 2009, when he reviewed a live show of the Coathangers, a scrappy all-female grrrl-wave four-piece from Atlanta. In a note that was apropos of nothing really, he mentioned that he had taken out a description of the women in the band as “super-cute,” because, he said, he didn’t want anyone to think he was into “skinny girls.”

His Facebook profile filled in some of the blanks. He wore black-rimmed glasses and uniformly tight band T-shirts. He had shaggy black hair that fell in wiry squiggles. He played guitar and studied English at William Paterson University. There were snapshots of him posed with a beautiful young woman who appeared to be more than twice his size, wearing a French-maid Halloween costume. And there was a link to Ask a Guy Who Likes Fat Chicks, an unsigned advice-column blog “for your plumper-related stumpers.”

Entries happily, ravenously, robustly referenced double bellies, back rolls, and “big old ham thighs.” Feminine body shapes were compared to pears, apples, and one calabash squash; their weights spanned from 180 pounds to over 500. “Big Fat Sexy Kitty,” a young woman who described herself as five feet tall and 260 pounds, wrote in: “I want fat sex. I want my jiggly bits rubbed and squished and fondled sexually.”

In person at the East Village's Cafe Orlin, Dan explains that, yes, he likes round bellies. He likes double chins. He likes breasts the size of his head. He loves flabby biceps. “Fat upper arms are awesome. I would almost say I’m an arms guy,” he says, not by any means whispering. “I didn’t know that they would be that soft. I, like, fell asleep on a girl’s arm once. I was like, ‘Wow.’ ”

The blog Ask a Guy Who Likes Fat Chicks began on a whim, with Dan posting during his border-crossing bus sojourns to visit his long-distance girlfriend of two years, the smoky-eyed French maid from Toronto. The phrase “Fat Chicks” was meant to be a reversal of the college-humor slogan “No Fat Chicks.” And in the online world of Facebook groups and BBW (Big Beautiful Woman) messageboards that Dan inhabits, “fat” is preferable to “overweight,” which implies a standard, or “hefty,” which belongs to the trash bag, or “heavy,” which sounds like furniture. And “Fat Admirer” is the most frequent shorthand for straight men who prefer fat partners—the better-known term “Chubby Chaser” has become associated with the gay community.

Too lazy to consider himself an activist, but cocky enough to be the mouthy weakling “who would be getting my neck rung by the bully and still saying shit,” Dan is ego-driven enough to envision a greater purpose. “Society sucks, and society says you need male validation. If you’re trying to say fat is attractive, as a lot of women out there are, it helps to find legitimate people who find this attractive.” Or, as he put it more bluntly on his Facebook page, after contributing twopro-fat pieces to lady blog The Hairpin, “I write about my preference for fat women in hopes that other men who share my preference will make themselves known so they’ll stop being little ballsacks and let the millions of fat women in this country find them.”

In other words, Guys Who Like Fat Chicks are not make-believe. “We’re out there.”

Dear Askaguywholikesfatchicks: Why do you like fat chicks? —Sincerely, A Fat ChickI’m so glad you asked. But the answer is: I don’t know. It’s the same I-don’t-know that pubescent boys will tell you after waking up strangely soaked from a night of dreaming about—I don’t know, Ashley Tisdale. The real question is, why are so many Fat Admirers in denial? I can’t tell you how many guys (or gals) there are like me, and a good portion of them being in the closet makes the numbers even fuzzier. Over half the U.S. is considered—DUN DUN DUN—“overweight.” Someone’s fucking all the fatties.* Be a sport and let them know.*Contrary to popular belief, it’s not me. [January 7, 2009]

Once upon a time, if a young man wanted to see a fat girl naked, he actually had to woo her. Playboy and Penthouse didn’t publish stretch-mark-mapped centerfolds. BBW nude-model paysites like PlumpPrincess.com and BigCuties.com did not exist. Dan didn’t have that problem. “An early memory was having Entertainment Weekly, cutting out pictures ofAnna Nicole Smith in the Guess ads, and just studying her boobs.” But unlike his Fat-Appreciating forebears, he had the Internet. “I was looking for bigger and bigger boobs online, and when you looked at bigger and bigger boobs, you wound up finding bigger girls. And I was like, ‘Oh, wait. I like all of this.’ ”